As a multiple award-winning company, Luminous Power Technologies has been celebrated repeatedly for its leadership in market penetration, quality products, and being a trusted and attractive brand among consumers. Present in more than 36 countries with a strong foothold in India, Africa and the Middle East, Luminous offers power back-up energy solutions and electrical products, with a specific focus on solar power applications. Under the leadership of Managing Director Vipul Sabharwal, the last 2 years has seen Luminous follow a relentless focus on improving and simplifying internal processes, product development and lifecycles to further benefit consumers and partners, while helping to drive the continued growth of the organisation.
As the power storage industry keeps evolving, Luminous must keep pace with it, creating new strong solar products and expanding further into the home electrical space. Vipul tells The CEO Magazine how he is leading the company through continued growth, applying a whole new vision for innovation and expansion, pieced together from his 25 years of executive leadership and retail expertise.
The CEO Magazine: Please give us a brief overview of your professional background up to and including your current position as Managing Director of Luminous Power Technologies?
Vipul: I am a marketing major and an economics graduate from Delhi University with a Master’s Degree from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. My career started with TTK as a management trainee, and shortly after I joined Johnson & Johnson, where I worked as an Area Sales Manager for 2 years. I then moved to Gillette India, where I worked for 17 years in the Sales and Marketing function, going on to become the General Sales Director in 2006. Thereafter I moved to Nokia for the next 5 years and was escalated to the designation of Sales Director in 2011. Prior to joining Luminous in September 2014, I also served as Vice President — Sales & Marketing at Whirlpool Corporation.
In my current position with Luminous, I am responsible for providing leadership initiatives across the business. Applying my 25 years of experience in key leadership positions in retail, I am working towards expanding the footprint of the company.
When you first came into the Managing Director role for Luminous, what opportunities did you see for growing the company?
After becoming Managing Director in 2014, there were two clear growth goals for the company. First, to widen the scope of the company’s business by transforming it from a pure-play power storage company to one that holds a much greater and wider portfolio. The second was the need to identify new opportunities to improve the innovation quotient in our product portfolio. Over the past 2 years we have strived to, and achieved, a lot of growth from these company goals.
I have tried to integrate the company behind one single vision to ensure sustained growth and to create a stronger brand in the power backup and home electrical space.
Over the past 2 years, I have tried to consolidate many ideas into one single vision, to ensure sustained growth and to create a stronger brand in the power backup and home electrical space. We were able to make the maximum use of circumstances by searching for new opportunities though adversity. Our unified focus has been to make our customers’ lives comfortable and efficient with our products and services, and this has been key to our success in traditional markets, while being the driving force behind our expansion into new territories.
We have zealously worked to make our processes simple and effective, which has resulted in improved productivity and efficiency. We are also passionate about achieving flawless executions in all aspects of our operations. Innovation is also key to our success; we identify the customer requirements and come out with the most innovative ideas to fulfil them. I hope to continue transforming the brand until we are known among the consumers for the power back-up genre and also for the home electrical space. This will eventuate through extending the brand to new categories, better execution and innovation.
What do you think sets Luminous Power Technologies apart from its competitors?
Our people are our biggest strength, which provides us an edge over our competitors. Our teams are constantly striving to innovate and develop the latest and most up-to-date technology. Every Luminous product is the result of innumerable hours of research, and as a result, our high-quality products enable us to offer a strong proposition to our channel partners as well as consumers. In turn, this will help us to improve our margins and profitability. We are also market leaders in terms of market penetration; we have seven manufacturing units, more than 28 sales offices in India and a global presence in more than 36 countries. Our 6,000 employees serve more than 60,000 channel partners and millions of customers. Frugal innovation, reducing the complexity and cost of our products and production processes, drives new technology and is core to our vision. It is essential to keep us growing and catering to the evolving consumer expectations. Our research and development constantly focuses on the modernisation and the assimilation of the latest technologies such as solar energy, because we cannot afford to be stagnant when consumer requirements are changing constantly.
What does the future hold for Luminous Power Technologies?
Looking ahead, we see a two-pronged approach of promoting our power back-up products, and ensuring our home electrical products continue working for us. The power back-up arm of the company is expected to register double-digit growth, with solar business being at the forefront; meanwhile our home electrical business is expected to deliver more than double-digit growth for us. We are also expanding our footprint in international markets, and targeting countries with similar market conditions as we have in India. We currently export our products in 36 countries; majority being in Asia and Africa.
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